Once we were secured to the quarantine dock by very friendly and welcoming marina staff, we awaited the arrival of our agent, but we were pleasantly surprised to receive an in-person welcome from Lane, off Mai Tai, whom we had been corresponding with during our Red Sea passage, but had never met. That was followed by a friend of Kandiba (Hasan and Zehra) coming to introduce himself and welcome us, as well as to offer his help with anything we needed. This reminded us of our welcome to Puerto Rico in 2014, when Campechano (Babbie and Ronnie) had arranged a similar welcome by a friend. Very thoughtful and greatly appreciated.
We had lost an hour after arriving in Turkey from Egypt, so, being collected by our agent after dark to be processed by Immigration and the Harbour Master, was definitely a novelty. By 2000, however, after opting to walk back to Paw Paw, we were enjoying our celebratory meal and drinks; bangers and mash, accompanied by some wine for Elaine and a wee drop of Laphroaig for Roy, before we both passed out from sheer exhaustion or was it the alcohol!
After a good night’s sleep, we stayed in bed this morning until Paw Paw had warmed up once Roy had switched on the heating, then enjoyed breakfast using the last of our Egyptian bread and oranges, following which we had showers and readied ourselves for the day. A big day at that because we were moving Paw Paw to her med-mooring berth, something we had never done before. Of course, this also meant we had no way of getting off Paw Paw because we didn’t own a passerelle. This was a problem for later!
In the interim, Elaine started a few small cleaning jobs like washing our saloon blinds and mosquito net curtain, while Roy completed formalities at the marina office, scoped out the laundry facilities and the communal bathrooms and visited the boatyard in search of someone who could acquire or make us a passerelle.
On his return, with Elaine at the helm and Roy ready to work the lines together with a dockhandler who had jumped aboard Paw Paw, we cast off the quarantine dock and followed the jetty boat around to our new home for the next year. Fortunately Elaine was able to reverse Paw Paw into the berth without incident and by 1230 we were secure, including a passerelle that was provided for our use temporarily.
It didn’t take long to meet our new neighbours to our starboard side, Gary and Katherine, following which another cruiser, Peter, stopped by to introduce himself and welcome us.
Not able to sleep, although we were both tired again by now, we decided a nice long walk was properly what we needed, stopping at one of the local cafés for our first Turkish coffee. Feeling somewhat refreshed and high on caffeine, we returned to the boatyard in anticipation of our passerelle dilemma being permanently resolved. Unfortunately it wasn’t, so we decided to pay our agent a visit in the hopes that he could help us. As it turns out he could, and he’d also completed all our clearance documentation which we were able to collect.
Back onboard, we enjoyed chats to Elaine’s folks in Ireland and to Keenan, who was in Michigan, staying with Courtney and Garrett, while awaiting his upcoming base transfer from New York to Detroit. It had been a good few weeks since we were able to enjoy a nice long chat and indeed “see” Keenan.
After dinner we started our search for possible flights to the US, the UK and Ireland, but we’d forgotten just how tedious and time consuming this process could be. Regardless, it was exciting and worth every minute and we found a few suitable options. Being pleasantly surprised at what we had managed to achieve for the day, by then it was definitely time for bed.
